What is it all about?
Bollywood gets real, reel after reel, week after week. After Peepli (Live), it's time to get more serious amidst Commonwealth scam and our neta's pay hike.
`Antardwand' Sushil Rajpal's `Antardwand' re introduction to our `Incredible India' where grooms are kidnapped and marriages take place by creating a hell - a phenomenon rampant during the eighties and still is active. Its told there where around 1000 odd cases last year, is a slow-burning slice of magical realism whose power lies in its subtlety rather than heavy-handed sensationalism.
The Story..of course
Groom Abduction or "Pakrauah Shaddi" once rampant in Bihar and Eastern UP during the 80's is touched upon in Antardwand.
It's a story of boy- Raghuveer who has just appeared for his Civil Services exams is admonished by his father against marrying his pregnant girlfriend in Delhi. Distraught and defenseless Raghu terminates his visit home in the interiors of Bihar and leaves for Delhi. But before he could get out of the village he gets ABDUCTED by another headstrong and ambitious father of a girl wanting to have a potential IAS officer as his son-in-law.
The boy is forcibly married off at a gun point much against his and the girl's own wishes. Once married, they are locked up in a room for days end till they consummate their marriage and accept each other completely....but do they accept each other in the face of inevitability?
What to look out for?
Finding resonance in its light handling of a practice popular in Bihar amongst a section of upper caste, its tells a disturbing yet engrossing, frustrating yet sympathetic (towards the couple especially the bride in the end) without overstating its themes or sentimentalizing the drama.
Filmmaker Sushil Rajpal tells a story where you are' forced' to react.
At first, the movie seems a slow-moving, it only gradually becomes clear that Sushil doesn't wanna play and keeps the setting s as it should be.
The film which could have been easily fallen prey to sensationalisms and bowed to the commercial push and pull of bollywood as the screenplay writer after the show told us about the atrocities done on the married couple in real but they omitted it and avoided the flick to become heavy handed.
And successfully create a vivid picture of our society where we live in and its problems.
Yeah there is a serial on Colours `Bhagyavidhata' on the same issue but `Antardwand' deals it more realistically and doesn't go overboard as TV serials do.
Set in the 80's, the movie is blessed with natural performance giving the movie more strength. Raj Singh Chaudhary as the abducted groom is simple and lives the role. Vinay Pathak is delightful in his Bihari accent. Swati Sen as the helpless bride is spontaneous and leaves her mark. Akhilendra Mishra as the egoistic father of the bride is perfect. Himanshi as Raj love interest is fine. Jaya Bhattacharya as Swatis bhabhi is wonderful.
Technically fine with good production values, Cinematography by Malay Ray is absorbing. Special mention for the art work by D.K Singh and Rajeev Dwivedi has to be made. Editing by Aseem Sinha is crisp. Amitabh Varma takes care of the bihari lingo in the dialogues.
The movie has scenes which get register like how the groom is forcibly told to consummate the marriage by making him drunk and hurting his male ego by calling him impotent.
The groom is made to take the saath pheras at a state when he is dead drunk with goons holding gun and giving him support.
What not?
So is there any problem.. yes.. For the `filmy' junta it's not happening.
The era of the film is 80's but the wardrobe especially of Raj and Himanshi in Delhi isn't. The helmer doesn't bother to say whether Raj comes to know that he has a child from his forced marriage.
Raj's father is worried about his son but the maker doesn't make it feel for us on screen. Raj's mother is mysteriously absent.
Conclusion: `Antardwand' has bowed in 55th National Film Awards as the best in social issues, it's provocatively infused with local colours, the film is a real art house item that should find champions as well as a few naysayers and need passionate support wherever it goes.
Rating ***&1/2
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